Sojourner Truth: Slave, Prophet, Legend

Front Cover
NYU Press, May 1, 1993 - Biography & Autobiography - 330 pages

Goes beyond the myths and legends to reveal new insights into the real life of Sojourner Truth

Many Americans have long since forgotten that there ever was slavery along the Hudson River. Yet Sojourner Truth was born a slave near the Hudson River in Ulster County, New York, in the late 1700s. Called merely Isabella as a slave, once freed she adopted the name of Sojourner Truth and became a national figure in the struggle for the emancipation of both Blacks and women in Civil War America.

Despite the dual discrimination she suffered as a Black woman, Truth significantly shaped both her own life and the struggle for human rights in America. Through her fierce intelligence, her resourcefulness, and her eloquence, she became widely acknowledged as a remarkable figure during her life, and she has become one of the most heavily mythologized figures in American history.

While some of the myths about Truth offer inspiration, they have also contributed to distortions about American history, especially about the experiences of Black Americans and women. In this landmark work, the product of years of primary research, Pulizter-Prize winning biographer Carleton Mabee has unearthed the best available sources about this remarkable woman to reconstruct the most authentic account of her life to date. Mabee offers new insights on why she never learned to read, on the authenticity of the famous quotations attributed to her (such as Ar'n't I a woman?), her relationship to President Lincoln, her role in the abolitionist movement, her crusade to move freed slaves from the South to the North, and her life as a singer, orator, feminist and woman of faith. This is an engaging, historically precise biography that reassesses the place of Sojourner Truth—slave, prophet, legend—in American history.

 

Contents

Riding Washingtons Horse Cars
Moving Freed Slaves to the North
Womens Rights
Goose Wings and High Heels
Drink and Smoke
Friend Titus
Friends and Supporters
Singer

Why Did She Never Learn to Read?
Her Famous Akron Speech
Confronting Douglass
Northampton to Battle Creek
Underground Railroader?
Libyan Sibyl
With President Lincoln and the Freedmen
Talking with
Notes
Bibliography of Works Cited
Acknowledgments
Index
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (1993)

Carleton Mabee is the author of many books, including the Pulitzer-Prize winning American Leonardo: A Life of Samuel F. B. Morse; Black Education in New York State, which won the John Ben Snow Prize; and Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 through the Civil War, which won the Anisfield-Wolf Award.

Bibliographic information